Jobs, better wages, less unpaid work key to making women's rights a reality: UN - TRFN

NEW YORK, April 27 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Creating
more jobs for women, closing the gender pay gap and reducing the
unpaid domestic work women undertake are vital to ensuring that
improvements in their rights are more than just gains on paper,
UN Women said in a report on Monday.

More girls are enrolling in schools and more women are
working, getting elected and assuming leadership roles since the
most progressive blueprint for advancing women's rights was
adopted by the United Nations in 1995.

Yet women earn on average 24 percent less than men and only
half of women of working age are in the global labour force,
according to the U.N. body for gender equality.

"We need to address ... this complete disconnect between
women's rights on paper ... and the actual outcomes on the
ground. That's where I think, globally, we're falling very
short," said Shahra Razavi, UN Women's data chief.

The report said introducing a minimum wage or providing
social programmes, such as pensions, health benefits and
childcare would make a huge difference to women.

"Many of these things are actually already happening in the
real world," Razavi told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

One example, she said, is Brazil, which overhauled its
faltering economy in the 1990s through economic and social
reforms that doubled the minimum wage, simplified registration
and taxes for small and medium-sized businesses, and promoted
the growth of formal or salaried jobs.

As a result 17 million new jobs were created between 2001
and 2009, 10 million of which were salaried, and women's formal
labour participation increased to 58 percent from 54 percent.
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